National Watch and Clock Museum

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The National Watch and Clock Museum (USA) (NWCM) located in Columbia, Pennsylvania is one of very few museums in the country solely dedicated to horology, i.e. the history, science and art of timekeeping and timekeepers.

Like its sister institution the National Watch and Clock Library the National Watch and Clock Museum is operated by the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors (NAWCC), a non-profit organization with about 25,000 members and an educational mission. The National Watch and Clock Museum was founded in 1977 by the NAWCC and over time has put together a major collection of horological artefacts, mainly clocks and watches, but also including related tools, machinery and ephemera, and has become an important institution in its field.

Most of the greatest and most important clocks and watches ever made have been preserved and exhibited - for decades if not centuries - as decorative art in such major museums around the world as the British Museum or the Metropolitan Museum in New York, or form a small department in the globally important museums of technology and science, like the Smithsonian Institution, the Musée des Arts et Métiers or the Deutsches Museum. There are only few museums like NWCM, dedicated principally to the history of timekeeping, and the majority of them - located in former centers of horological production - have primarily a local or regional focus. Since the former "Time Museum" in Rockford, IL closed in the 1990s, the NWCM is often described as the broadest specialist horology museum in the country. (The only comparable museum in the USA is the American Watch and Clock Museum in Bristol, CT, but that one is more focused on American-made timekeepers).

The museum, located on the fringe of the Pennsylvania Dutch tourist area, serves both a general public (including youth), as well as a specialised audience of horological aficionados (including NAWCC members), which appreciate its study collection and some of the more specialised temporary exhibits.

[edit] Exhibits

The museum shows the history of timekeepers from the first non-mechanical devices (sun-dials, hour-glasses, fire-clocks) to the atomic clock and mass-produced wristwatches of the present. There is a "Learning Center" introducing some of the basic technologies of the mechanical timekeeper, such as the pendulum, and a large and varied exhibit on many type of clock escapement. There is an excellent sample of American-made tall case clocks (popularly known as "grandfather clocks"), a comprehensive exhibit on American watches, and a small but excellent area dedicated to automatic machinery used in watch manufacturing. Other highlights include the "Engel Clock", a complicated automaton built in Germany in the 19th century, for showing in traveling carnivals as a "curiosity".

The NWCM has an ongoing schedule of temporary exhibits - usually two of them at a time, one devoted to a general timekeeping-related theme of interest to the public, and the other a specialised show appealing primarily to horological collectors.